Black Flags and Windmills: 1 of the top 5 books to read in 2011

crow is a long-term activist who shares the lessons he’s learned in organizing.

He
and a few others founded the Common Ground Collective in New Orleans
in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. There’s a lot of trauma in NOLA, and
that comes through in the book.

But you also get the sense that writing this book was healing for crow.

“I don’t tell a personal narrative to build myself up but to show that
we can all do this,” he told me during a phone interview a few weeks
ago. “I’m not trying to set myself up as a hero. I’m setting ourselves
up to be heroes for each other.”

crow has been subjected to close
scrutiny by the FBI. He requested his FBI file and received back 440
heavily-redacted pages. In 2006, he found out he was listed as a
“domestic terrorist” due to his activism. He has been arrested in
demonstrations but never charged with anything more than trespassing.

crow
says the surveillance and ongoing criminalization of dissent is “an
absolute farce. People like me are paper tigers. If you are going to
have a war on terrorism, you need terrorists. Who are easy to find?
Social activists.”

He knows that the FBI uses surveillance as a
way to intimidate activists. “What everyone fears about surveillance,
it’s happened to me, and I’m OK,” he says. “It hasn’t been pleasant.
But I’m OK.”